Chapter 10

The meeting with Lord Montvale this morning had not necessarily gone as Abby had planned.

A gross understatement, but she refused to think on it anymore.

She had, once again, hidden herself away for the remainder of the day.

The dowager didn’t get many callers. Or any, really, she had told Abigail, since people were unilaterally terrified of her son.

But she called on several families regularly.

Abigail had cried off accompanying the older woman, citing a need to write to her mama.

This was a lie about which she felt slightly guilty, but she really wasn’t up for company of any description, and she certainly didn’t want the dowager watching her too closely for fear she would read the truth of what Abigail had been up to with her son.

Her guilt was assuaged slightly when she heard that James was being dragged along. Against his will but still, he was going. And a marquess was surely a far better addition to afternoon At Homes than an American nobody.

Having spent the day almost exclusively in her room, Abby was now preparing herself to come face to face with the duke again at dinner.

Bessie had taken her white silk evening gown to be pressed while Abby had soaked in a lavender scented bath, and now the young maid was putting the finishing touches to an elaborate hairstyle that Abigail had no interest in.

“There we are, pretty as a picture, miss.” Bessie smiled at Abigail’s reflection, and she managed a small one back.

“You’d best get a move on, miss, or you’ll be late to dinner. His grace won’t be pleased.”

At the mention of Lord Montvale, Abby’s heart fluttered wildly.

“Is he a very unkind master, Bessie?” she asked.

Really, she shouldn’t be questioning the staff, but she was desperate for any information about the brooding duke. And she knew that Bessie would have all sorts of information from the other maids.

Abigail had heard and seen his temper. She knew he could be surly and gruff.

Yet he listened to his mother’s excited chatter with equanimity. He was doing all in his considerable power to ensure that their trip to London and subsequent stay would be as comfortable as possible, even though he really didn’t want to go.

And when he held her and kissed her, he was so gentle, even though she could feel the strength of the passion he held in check, lurking beneath the surface.

And shocking though it was, she wanted to be the one to make that control snap, to experience the full force of his desire.

“Unkind, miss?”

Bessie’s voice snapped Abigail from her highly inappropriate musings. The man was turning her into a veritable hussy!

“No, he’s not unkind. Nobody has ever seen him in a good mood,” the girl continued frankly. “But none have ever experienced unkindness at his hands. He’s a fair and generous boss. Takes very good care of his tenants and servants, so say the maids.”

Abigail tried to ignore the feeling of relief that swept over her. It was really nothing to do with her, how he treated his staff. Yet she couldn’t help but be pleased that he treated them well.

“He’s just so grumpy,” Bessie continued, earning a smile from Abigail. “And you wouldn’t want to cross him. Why, just this morning, young Milly was telling me quite the tale. Last year, he found out one of the footmen had—”

Bessie stopped abruptly, meeting Abigail’s eyes in the mirror and flushing slightly.

“Do go on,” Abigail urged.

“I shouldn’t, miss,” the maid mumbled, fussing with Abby’s curls. “It wouldn’t be right to speak of such things to a gently bred lady.”

Abby reached up to stop Bessie’s bothering of her hair before turning on the vanity’s bench so she could face the other girl.

She was quite sure that a gently bred English lady of deportment would never grab hold of a maid so she could interrogate the servant about scandalous actions but hang deportment! She needed to know.

“I won’t tell a single soul that you divulged this information, Bessie,” she promised, pulling the girl gently to sit beside her on the velvet bench.

“And, really, if Lord Montvale’s behaviour is, is dangerous…” She whispered the word for dramatic effect but felt a crackle of guilt as she did so. He was a lot of things, but she’d never felt in any danger with him, and it felt wrong that she should make such accusations or implications.

Still, needs must.

And it worked, too.

Bessie’s eyes widened, and she shook her brown curls at an alarming rate.

“Oh no, miss. You mustn’t think that his grace did anything that would make him a danger to a young woman. Tis the exact opposite, in fact!”

Abby frowned in confusion, and Bessie blinked at her a couple of times before sighing in resignation.

“Very well, I’ll tell you. But if Mrs. Johnson finds out I’ve been telling you servants’ gossip, she’ll have my head.”

Abby didn’t blame Bessie for fearing the redoubtable housekeeper, but she assured Bessie that anything told to her in confidence would remain so and not leave the room.

“Well, miss, it’s like this,” Bessie finally began. “They’d a footman come up from London. He’d worked with a friend of his grace’s. Not sure which one, not that he has many. Anyway, none of the girls liked him from the second he arrived. Always lurking in corners, creeping around where our bedchambers are.”

Abby could see the revulsion in Bessie’s eyes, and she reached out to pat the young girl’s hand supportively.

“One of the girls, Lucy, was the sweetest little thing you could ever meet, Milly said. She wasn’t very bright, Lord save her, but her da had died when she was a lass, and her ma was too sick to work.”

Abby’s stomach clenched in apprehension of what she suspected was to come in the story.

“Freddie, that was the name of the scoundrel, well he took a liking to her and one night he convinced her to go for a walk round the stables with him.”

Bessie snorted, and a flash of anger lit her brown eyes.

“A walk my ar—”

She glanced quickly at Abby, blushing slightly.

“Well, anyway, off they went and of course, when they were out of sight, he—well, he—”

“Oh no, Bessie.”

Abby was distraught, but the young maid was quick to reassure her.

“He tried, miss,” she said sombrely. There was no need to speak the words. They both knew what the blackguard had done.

“But by the grace of God, Lord Montvale was out by the stables that night, and he heard poor Lucy’s screams.”

Abby’s heart was hammering as she listened to Bessie’s tale.

Her heart wrenched painfully at the thought of the poor, innocent girl who’d found herself in the clutches of such a man.

She knew how it was, in the usual way of things.

Females of the serving classes were often treated thus, raped, abused, then discarded by men from all walks of life.

It was beyond despicable, and she despised it.

“His grace ran to where they were. The commotion woke some of the stable hands, and they filled the house workers in on what happened.”

The clock on the mantle chimed, interrupting Bessie’s recounting of the event, and she glanced up at it before jumping from her seat.

“Gracious, miss, you’ll be late to dinner. I shouldn’t have been rabbiting on so, if—”

“Bessie.” Abby’s tone was sharper than she’d intended, and she smiled up at the younger girl to soften its effects. “I want to hear the rest of the story. If I am late to dinner, I shall take full responsibility. But for now, please do go on.”

Bessie sighed in resignation.

“There’s not much left to say, in any case,” she said, moving to pick up Abby’s satin evening gloves, smoothing them as she came back and began to help Abby’s hands into them.

“By all accounts, his grace was furious. He beat the man to a pulp, the stable lads said. It took five of them to get him off the blighter, and even that was a struggle. Called for the magistrate but since he’d stopped any actual crime, Freddie walked free.”

“The cad,” Abby cried furiously.

“Right enough,” Bessie agreed then her face split in a mischievous grin. “Course, he walked free with a permanent limp and not a penny in his pocket,” she said. “And his grace warned him never to set foot in Northumberland again, which I’ll warrant he won’t, if he knows what’s good for him. He’s lucky he weren’t killed. His grace also made sure to inform the blighter that he would be keeping tabs on him. And should he ever get wind that Freddie had put a hand on another young miss, his grace would see him hanged.”

Abby could feel no sympathy for the man.

Her heart fluttered wildly at the knowledge of Robert’s defence of poor, young Lucy, and she didn’t care to examine what this tender feeling rising up in her was.

Robert would defend the honour of a servant girl without a moment’s pause. And he was certainly big and strong enough to do so.

Imagine how he would protect a woman he cared about…

“Miss?”

Abby flushed slightly as she realised that her silly, romantic thoughts had wandered to the duke once more.

“What happened to Lucy, Bessie? Is she still here?”

“No, miss.”

Abby stood and shook out her white satin skirts whilst Bessie fetched a dusky pink shawl that matched the piping on the gown.

“Milly said his grace enquired as to her circumstances and when he heard what hardships she and her ma had suffered, he set them up in a small cottage free of charge. Lucy helps the local seamstress, and his grace makes sure that her mother is well taken care of.”

Abby’s heart fluttered again.

It seemed Robert Forsythe was far more wonderful than he wanted people to know.

“I wonder then that he’s called a monster,” she said boldly, knowing that Bessie would have heard such things, given she had already become firm friends with the local girls.

“Nobody outside of the estate workers know Lucy’s story, miss,” she said. “His grace forbade them to tell anyone, and much as we servants like to talk, ain’t one of us brave enough to go against his wishes.”

No, she probably wouldn’t be either.

Yet she’d defied him over the flowers he so despised.

“But he is mightily bad tempered, miss, at the best of times. And you could never accuse him of being friendly. Scares the wits out of the menfolk, that’s for sure. It’s just that we know he’d never hurt a woman.”

That was true. Hadn’t she, herself, already known instinctively that he wouldn’t hurt her? And he’d been more than friendly when he’d taken her in his arms.

Abby felt the heat rise in her cheeks once more.

“Well, I should go,” she said briskly, taking the proffered shawl. “Thank you for telling me, Bessie.”

The young lady smiled in response.

Just as Abby was about to step through the door, the young maid spoke again.

“Will London really be so terrible?”

Robert raised a brow in response to James’s frankly ridiculous question.

Yes, it would be so terrible.

He had absolutely no desire to be around other people at the best of times.

But in London? Where people gawped at him, whispered about him or worse—tried to befriend him—was beyond the pale.

And that wasn’t even the worst part. No, the worst part was the desperate debutantes and their drill sergeant mothers, who even though they feared him, would still make ever more desperate attempts to bring him up to scratch. Fear, after all, was no match for wealth and a title.

The fact of the matter was that it was unsafe to be a single, wealthy, titled man in London during the Season.

And a duke was in more danger than most.

He couldn’t think of a single thing worse than having to fend off silly young women.

The door to the drawing room opened wider than it had been, and Abigail Langton swept into the room, smiling as his mother moved to greet her.

Robert’s breath caught in his throat as he studied the young lady that was turning his world upside down.

The dowager pulled her toward the couple she’d been conversing with, the local magistrate and his wife.

There were few people Robert tolerated as guests in Montvale Hall. The magistrate was a bit too jolly for his liking, but his mother enjoyed the company of the rotund man’s wife, and so they were invited to dine. Occasionally, but it was enough to keep his mother happy.

Miss Abigail Langton.

How could one, tiny termagant cause such chaos within him?

He watched as she moved across the room, her white satin gown swishing around her ankles as she went.

She looked like the very embodiment of an angel—all blond curls, wide blue eyes, and virginal white skirts.

The dress encased her in a way that was everything proper but all the more tempting for it, and he felt a sudden, visceral desperation to strip it from her and see what lay beneath.

Which he shouldn’t be feeling, of course.

They were a study in opposites, she and he.

Abby walked into a room and lit it up with her radiant smile.

He walked into a room, and people scurried to the corners as fast as they could travel.

She was resplendent in white and pink and lightness.

He wore all black as was his custom, only the white of his shirt and cravat offering any sort of relief from the darkness of his attire.

And she was smiling. A real, genuine smile that made her eyes sparkle and appear as pools of the clearest waters.

If he ever properly smiled, he was quite sure his face would crack.

must be true, then, that opposites attract.

Because he’d never been more attracted to anyone in his life.

“Now you see why I need you in London.” James, having been completely forgotten by Robert, spoke quietly by his side. “I’ll be fighting them off in droves.”

Robert’s stomach roiled as James’s words sank in, and an ugly jealousy crawled through his veins.

He had thought that fighting off young ladies was the worst thing about this proposed trip to London?

How laughable.

The worst thing would be watching Abigail Langton pick some ridiculous dandy or other to marry and walking out of his life forever.